Philosophy in Modern and Postmodern literature

[AbdoRinbo]

The heading is pretty self-explanatory. Does anyone out there have an interest in Marx, Freud, Neitzsche, Wittgenstein, Darwin, Heidegger, (and now onto the Postmodernists) Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Sartre, Camus, and/or Deleuze (or any that I might have forgotten)? Perhaps you have something keen to say about T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, H.G. Wells, Franz Kafka, or even Anthony Burgess, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, &c., &c., &c. What part do you think a certain philosopher has played in a certain work of literature? Who is important and who is not? If you like, go beyond Modernism. But no fair claiming that Michel Foucault had an influence on Marcel Proust. Ah, what the heck . . . if causality is what you are debunking, don't hold back.

[DaScouser]

Your question is rather broad, and too much infringes upon history, where I can more than accomodate you. Try Formalism if you want a reinterpretation of all literature. Dostoevsky has never been the same since, or Emma.

Foucault is a tricky one, for I like his historicism, but his philosophy of language is rather fluid to the point of dilution. Dense is what I want, which is the very matter of Derrida. As for Bartes, let the female psychologists drool over his bus flattened carcase.

[AbdoRinbo]

Your question is rather broad, and too much infringes upon history, where I can more than accomodate you. Try Formalism if you want a reinterpretation of all literature. Dostoevsky has never been the same since, or Emma.

Foucault is a tricky one, for I like his historicism, but his philosophy of language is rather fluid to the point of dilution. Dense is what I want, which is the very matter of Derrida. As for Bartes, let the female psychologists drool over his bus flattened carcase.

On one hand, we could very well do without all the Foucauldians, Deconstructionists, Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts, &c. On the other, I can't ignore the fact that they have had a very profound influence on Postmodern literature, and likewise for the Modernists, who found their inspiration in Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, or whoever. Stick to certain works of literature or philosophy though; don't try and tackle the whole Postmodernism . . . your head will collapse and the earth will be consumed by a spiraling black hole.

[chrisvosje]

Stick to certain works of literature or philosophy though; don't try and tackle the whole Postmodernism . . . your head will collapse and the earth will be consumed by a spiraling black hole.

Ah, like trying to understand 'Finnegans Wake' :D

Of course all literature is influenced by ideologies, philosophies, and other ways of thinking. So are we, as readers. There's no escape, and no need to escape, just the need to be aware.

[DaScouser]

But aware of what is the answer? Not having read Finnigans Wake I can only comment on the flicking through the one sentence. But it is essentially one conscious thought, ending as how it started. Trying to assert postmodernism on a modernist text is like trying to make a cheese omelette with only cheese. Joyce is an extremely difficult author to grasp because he was so heavily influenced by moving pictures, and so his text tries to instil this scientific essence: Ulysses. We should be aware that most criticised texts remain in the past, as very modern texts are too personal and so only emit a conscious essence. This doesn't mean they are uncritical, but what are we criticising, but the self.

The question arises adbo is, if you are confronted with a black hole, would you enter it, and indeed, would you have any choice in the matter... that is if a black hole is matter at all?

[AbdoRinbo]

There's no escape, and no need to escape, just the need to be aware.

Ah, sounds like Stephen Hawking.

I'm glad this discussion took a turn towards Joyce (together, we represent a hefty 75% of the Joyce enthusiasts on this board). If literature is continually feeding off of philosophy, theology, philology, economics, &c., then we can assume (especially in the case of Finnegans Wake) that the very opposite is true: that literature itself impacts the theories which have come to define it. Postmodernism is, in a sense, both a cause and a result of FW--considered by many to be the last work of Modernism and, simultaneously, the first work of Postmodernism. I remember a quote from Harold Bloom which touched on this subject in a round about sort of way (and I'm paraphrasing): 'A Freudian reading of Shakespeare (. . . sometimes the eggs are not added until last, DaScouser. But I'll get to you next.)? What about a Shakespearean reading of Freud?'

What about a Joycean reading of Postmodernism? Go to your local bookstore and look for Joyce criticism (I was at Shakespeare & Company a few days ago, and there was an entire shelf--seven meters long--devoted to the many different ideological readings of Joyce. But even this represents less than 1% of all the Joyce kritik), but try looking for a criticism that focuses on his legacy. Besides the Ellmann biography, there are a few good interpretations of pop-culture that go into some detail about Joyce's transformation of the word into the multi-layered flesh and blood of the world (as the scholars like to say again and again). Nearly all plays on assonance (for example, DaScouser's cleverly crafted transformation of 'matter' as subject of concern into 'matter' as substance [if only there were more people like you in the cultural abyss I live] just by putting sounds on a certain trajectory or words in a particular pattern) are a Joycean legacy.

[AbdoRinbo]

But aware of what is the answer? Not having read Finnigans Wake I can only comment on the flicking through the one sentence. But it is essentially one conscious thought, ending as how it started. Trying to assert postmodernism on a modernist text is like trying to make a cheese omelette with only cheese. Joyce is an extremely difficult author to grasp because he was so heavily influenced by moving pictures, and so his text tries to instil this scientific essence: Ulysses. We should be aware that most criticised texts remain in the past, as very modern texts are too personal and so only emit a conscious essence. This doesn't mean they are uncritical, but what are we criticising, but the self.

The question arises adbo is, if you are confronted with a black hole, would you enter it, and indeed, would you have any choice in the matter... that is if a black hole is matter at all?

I would say that Finnegans Wake is not worth trying to interpret in any way whatsoever . . . Joyce went to great pains to keep us readers from penetrating the mass of this 'manmade mountain'. However, I should add that trying to capture the essence of FW, if there is one, by claiming it is a monumental, extended (though, subconscious) thought (as those who first attacked the novel did) is to reduce the wide range of styles, sounds, colors (though FW is nearly impossible to visualize in any way, since it is set in the black void of H. C. Earwicker's dream) and textures to mere functions of the depiction of the nocturnal mind. 'Blow the bridge up', as Joyce once retorted regarding the function of the silent monologue in Ulysses, which was merely a device he used to get from the beginning of the story to its proper conclusion, the . . . heh . . . pleasure of Molly's final soliloquy.

Now onto the omelettes . . . I don't know how much you know about Protestantism (and the many other metaphysical beliefs), DaScouser, but there is a very logical argument on their side (but it fails miserably, as all arguments eventually do) that the effects of actions are their causes and that the first moment in history was, strictly speaking, the final resolution of everything (i.e. the final manifestation of God). At face value, this seems to clash with our traditional understanding of causality, but, in reality, it has haunted us for over two millennia. Even Aristotle wrote about 'final causes' as being initial purposes which launched the machinery of the Universe into a response of activity which would reveal itself to us one day in the form of its final cause. . . . Do you see where this is going? Can you laugh at the joke now instead of deconstructing it?

All
moanday, tearsday,
wailsday, thumpsday,
frightday, shatterday
Finnegans Wake, (p. 301)